User talk:Af1317a

Welcome!
Hello, Af1317a, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Edits reverted at Aaron Copland
It looks like your edits were reverted at Aaron Copland by, who gave a few reasons for this in the edit summary: "disastrous grammatical errors, syntax error destroyed the infobox, non-sequitur involving earliest composition dates, etc. Please be careful, and is your instructor reviewing your work first?"

Looking at the content, it looks like you had accidentally removed part of the infobox when you made your edit. Be very careful with editing - this is why I tend to like editing with VisualEditor, as I can see what the article will look like while I'm editing and it's generally more user friendly than source mode, making it less likely that I'll accidentally mess up a template. If you don't have VisualEditor enabled, here are directions on how to enable both VisualEditor and source mode on your account.

The other main issue looked to be grammar based, as the sentences were structured in an odd fashion. Since this may be due to a language barrier (my apologies if it isn't and I'm just being presumptuous), I wanted to re-write the sentences for you. If you ever have questions about how to word a sentence, feel free to ask me (or your professor or classmates) for help.


 * The composition was dedicated to his sister-in-law, who had brought him cherries while he was sick.
 * The composition was dedicated to his sister-in-law, as she had brought him cherries while he was sick.

This pairs up with the sentence "Copland began wrote his first composition at the age of eight and a half." Since the prior sentence gave Copland's age as 8 and a half, we don't have to specify that he was a child when his sister-in-law gave him the fruit, as almost all readers would see someone aged 8 as a child. With this in mind, all we have to do is say who the piece was dedicated to and why since this sentence would be building on the information given in the last sentence.

There are two ways that you can refer to the sister-in-law in the second part of the sentence: who or she. To use "she" you would have to add on the word "as", because this changes the way that we refer to the information about the cherries. When we use "who" we are identifying her as the sister-in-law who brings cherries, but using the word "she" turns this information into a reason. Either is fine, honestly.

The second portion you added can be rephrased like this:


 * After returning from France Copland attempted to launch a teaching career. He was unsuccessful due to a lack of student interest, so Copland took a job as a hotel pianist.

I added his name to the first sentence since I felt like this makes it flow a little better. I changed the section sentence to make the lack of success a little more bold reading, as it helps improve clarity.

I am concerned, however, that the second sentence was not placed in the right area, as you put this sentence in the middle of a section about Copland's schooling in France. It doesn't really make sense to have a sentence about the future in the middle of a paragraph about the past, especially as it doesn't tie into anything. There's a similarity in that the section was about a teacher, but Copland's later attempt at teaching wouldn't really belong here unless the teacher was the one who inspired him to teach. If this is the case then you can phrase it in a way like "Studying under Boulanger would later influence Copland's attempts to teach music in the United States." You could place this at the end of the paragraph, as this would make the most sense because it's referring to Boulanger's overall influence and would make more sense chronologically. You wouldn't need to really elaborate on his first attempt at teaching being unsuccessful in this section, as that's something that would be best added to the specific section that deals with his teaching.

I hope that you find this helpful! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:52, 18 September 2017 (UTC)